Freedom is a Dream
by AKA DD
Summary: Challenge Fic: Must involve fireworks. Max and Alec, fireoworks. No literally, there are fireworks.


**DISCLAIMER: I have this plan to hold everyone at Fox hostage until they gave me the copyrights to Dark Angel…but it turns out, Fox is really big and powerful…so I have to revise my plan. For now, Dark Angel still isn't mine. (_And to the wonderful people at Fox, you didn't really think I'd do it, did you? Of course, not_!)**

**A/N: This is inspired by CandyCentric's plot bunny whose name was never fully defined. Here are the parameters of said bunny:**

_**A shorter fic about a Transgenic (of your choosing) seeing fireworks for the first time.**_

Who is the Transgenic seeing the fireworks?

Why are there fireworks? 

Is there anyone else there?

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**FREEDOM IS A DREAM**

Alec stalked quietly towards the small, lone figure on the rooftop. He stood next to the boy, allowing him to become accustomed to his presence before looking down at him with a small smirk.

"Hey," he said softly. "Bugler, right?"

'Yes, sir," the kid replied, straightening his shoulders a little bit more, jutting his chin forward, and just barely stopping himself from saluting Alec.

Alec chuckled. "Don't let Max hear you calling me 'Sir', now. She'll think I made you say it so that I could feel good about myself," he quipped.

Bugler, all of nine-years-old, scrunched up his nose in confusion. "Sir?"

Alec tossed a sideways glance at the child. "It was a joke, kid. Forget it."

"Oh. Okay, sir."

"And stop calling me 'sir'. It makes me feel old," he smirked. He was so accustomed to using jokes and light banter to do the talking for him, that he was unable to bite back the quip.

"I…I'm sorry," Bugler stammered uncertainly.

Alec sighed heavily. "Naw, it's alright. You didn't do anything wrong."

He felt a small bubble of pity for this X8. Bugler was a prisoner of his genes. It wasn't his fault. X8's had been carefully designed to be the chumps of the bunch of X's. They were given the menial tasks: polishing boots, working in the mess hall, being in the Bugle Corps, members of the color guard, and such. They weren't particularly intelligent either, and barely able to initiate anything on their own. They were made to be followers, the foot soldiers to do the bidding of their higher-ranked officers.

In a way, Alec envied the simple innocence of the X8's. To follow with full faith and trust in someone else was something the X5's would probably never learn how to do. They would always be wary, too strong-minded, and stubborn for their own good.

But what really made Alec purse his lips in a thoughtful frown was the fact that if he wanted to communicate with the kid, he couldn't rely on subtlety, humor and innuendo. Nope, double meanings and sarcasm would only cause the boy needless confusion. He'd have to _really_ talk. It wasn't something that Alec particularly liked to do. It required choosing the right words, and worse, _meaning_ them at face value.

He sighed heavily again, eliciting a questioning glance from the young boy.

"So, what'cha doin' all the way up here?" asked Alec conversationally.

Bugler slid a nervous look towards Alec. "Uh…I know we weren't supposed to go off on our own…but…but…I heard there were gonna be fireworks," he stammered.

Alec blinked in surprise. The kid had just broken off and done something he wanted to do for himself. This was progress away from mindless collectivity. It had to be encouraged. "Fireworks, huh?"

"Yeah, I've never seen fireworks before," admitted the child, his blue eyes suddenly glowing with anticipation. "I've read all about them. And I've learned of the Physics behind them. I've heard about how beautiful they were. I heard someone say it was like raining lights."

Alec tilted his head downward just a little bit and reached back to scratch his barcode. He shifted from foot-to-foot as he contemplated how to break the news to the kid. Alec remembered how he had once imagined what fireworks were like. He had been sorely disappointed at the paltry sparks that the Post-Pulse world had offered. He just didn't want the kid to feel that kind of disillusionment.

"Bugler…you do realize that at this distance from City Hall, you'll only see little colored sparks?"

Bugler shrugged. "Still." He said simply.

_Still._ Alec nodded accepting the simplicity and honesty of the answer.

"Sir…I mean, Alec…what are the fireworks for?"

Alec smiled almost wistfully into the darkness. "Freedom," he replied, his voice very soft. "It's the Fourth of July, kid. It's Independence Day."

Bugler took a deep breath and released it into a tiny puff of condensation. "_Freedom_," he repeated quietly, just as the first shower of light burst through the air in pinks and greens and blues.

They could hear the distant thunder of the explosions, so similar to the roar of canon fire. They watched the bursts of sparks flying through the inky blackness of the night, like gunfire in the darkness. They saw the way the bright colors lit up the night, the way a rescue flare did when shot up into the air.

It was like hope flashing through the shadows of despair.

Alec stood in riveted silence as he looked at the fireworks in a new light. Since that first time he had seen fireworks, he had stopped appreciating them. He'd chalked it up as a fascist display of power, part of the propaganda that enslaved the minds of the people. He snorted into the cold air. He was too cynical.

He had forgotten that there could be something far less sinister to this expression of American patriotism. Something like freedom.

"Alec…are we free?" asked Bugler, his voice tremulous with hope.

Alec glanced heavenward momentarily, thinking of a PG-9 version of an answer for the kid, and chuckled. "We've always been free, Bugler. Manticore just didn't tell us."

"So, Manticore was bad, huh?"

He glanced down at the confused child and almost smirked at himself at the paternal instincts that were starting to kick in. He crouched low so he was eye-to-eye with innocent blue eyes.

Innocent, because he had been too young to know the horrors of indoctrination and PsyOps. Too young to have been forced to bury all traces of his conscience in exchange for survival. Too young to know that Manticore had only created him to use him like a toy soldier.

"Kid, nobody can take away your freedom, okay? Some people might try to take away your power to use it, and that's what we have to pay a price for," he explained softly, breaking the news as gently as he could. "We fought Manticore because it asked us to give up that power completely. It asked for a price that was too high to pay. The people there, they wanted to own us, and if we didn't obey, we had to pay with our lives. Do you understand?"

Bugler nodded solemnly as Alec put into words things that he had felt but couldn't grasp. "Like all the kids in my Unit that disappeared. Like everyone that they terminated after the fire. They didn't want us to know about freedom," he whispered with dawning understanding.

_Not so innocent after all_, thought Alec. He straightened up and ruffled the kid's hair. "The show's over. You better run back to Aria and check-in with her. She might be worried that she's missing you. I mean, who'd wake us up in the morning without your bugle blaring through the entire place, huh?"

Bugler smiled shyly at Alec. "Thank you, sir."

"Don't call me, sir." Alec replied automatically.

Bugler smiled cheekily at him. "I know I don't have to. But I'm choosing to. Besides, you _are_ old." With that, the young boy blurred out of sight.

Alec laughed silently in amusement. Damn. Those X8's were actually quite fast learners.

"Look what you've done, Alec. He's mouthing off already," came a sardonically amused voice.

Without having to look over his shoulder, Alec just smiled into the night sky. "Hey, Max."

She came to stand next to him, her brown eyes glancing sideways at his profile. He was carefully illuminated by the moonlight, the bluish white light of the moon made his face look cold and unyielding.

"So, the fireworks were for freedom, huh? I kinda like that. Has a real poetic bend to it."

"Yeah, either that or the propaganda's just real good. Who knows how the twisted minds of the men down there work," he sighed.

"How tragic of you, Alec. You never once believed any of that stuff you spouted off to the kid, did you? And here I thought you were such a poet," she said dryly, slightly disappointed.

Alec turned his head to look at Max. He looked past the beautiful profile, the big brown eyes, and the full pouting lips. He really looked at her. "_You_ believe it."

She shrugged, not denying it.

Alec didn't know whether to laugh at her or be in awe of her.

He just shook his head and settled for a good chuckle. The thing about Max was that she never stopped surprising him with her mix of world-weariness and innocence. For someone who had spent her whole life running away to save her life, she still believed in something so simple as freedom.

"Freedom, my ass," he snorted disdainfully.

Max just gave him a sidelong glance, and remained thoughtfully quiet, the way she used to when she stood on the Space Needle.

"Max, you've seen all kinds of shit in this world, and you still think everyone is free?" he asked incredulously.

She sighed heavily and turned to face him fully. "My life sucks. It couldn't possibly suck any more than it does now. But it's still my life, y'know?"

Alec regarded her with skepticism. "Not to be the cloud on your sunshiny day, but is your life really your own, Max?" He threw his hand out in a grand gesture that encompassed the entire of Terminal City. "Can you really just wake up tomorrow and walk away from all this?"

Max looked at Terminal City. Using her enhanced vision, she could see every single Transgenic that crossed her visual range clearly. Many of them were huddled together next to barrels of fiery garbage for warmth. Some of them were talking in whispers in small groups, occasionally laughing out loud. There were others who slept peacefully in each other's arms. Max swallowed back her quick retort, because Alec was right. She couldn't just walk away. Even when she wanted to.

"You're right. You are a cloud. A big fat ugly gray one," she muttered grudgingly. "Damn you."

Alec shoved his hands deeply into his pants pockets. "And now I'm gonna rain on your parade, cuz like it or not, we're less than free. We're living in cages," he said this like a lightly veiled challenge.

"But cages of our own choosing," she pointed out, still unwilling to completely bow down to his point in their argument. Not that they were really arguing. It was rare and far between, but she and Alec occasionally had civilized conversations.

Alec rolled his eyes again. "Yeah right," he laughed. "You _chose_ to live like this?"

"What about you," she countered, "did you choose to stay here, too?"

Alec was quiet for a moment. Then he muttered as if to himself, "Cages of our own choosing…" Then he chuckled and shook his head, as if amused by his own thoughts. Max just continued to stare at him, her eyebrow cocked in question.

"I guess, you were right after all, Maxie. I chose to be with you."

She was slightly taken aback by his answer. "W…what?"

"To stay with everyone," he corrected quickly. "I didn't want you to be all lonely up in your cage," he added lightly.

He threw her a sidelong glance and saw that she was still blinking in surprise. He pursed his lips in consternation, chiding himself for being _that_ honest with her. The eight-second silence between them stretched for too long for him. He scratched his head uneasily. "Yeah, you know…I mean, _somebody's_ gotta teach those X8's how to mouth off. 'Sides, if I'm in a cage, I might as well do as I damn well please in it."

She snorted. But she was still reeling from his declaration. Max shut her eyes briefly and counted to five. She didn't want to explore the further implications of his unexpected announcement. The one he was now sweeping away under the rug of his humor. And by God, she let him sweep. It was good and comfortable being friends. They'd just discovered that. She didn't need anything more or less to be ruining it.

So, with a small shake of her head she brushed aside his little comment. "Yeah, I guess so. We are bearers of a freedom that doesn't really exist."

Alec laughed out loud. "It's like a dream, y'know? It's what everyone wants, but no one really gets to have. Like when you're dreaming of food, and just when you reach for it, you wake up, and you've only got air in your hands. That hurts."

Max had a strange expression on her face, a cross between laughter and pity.

"What?" he asked. "It was a metaphor!"

"Suuure." She chuckled.

"I think I made a good point." He said, spreading his hands out in front of him, palms up, his expression that of feigned innocence.

Still laughing Max turned around to leave. "Freedom is a dream, I get it," she said over her shoulder. "Sweet dreams, Alec. And I mean that metaphorically."

Alec groaned, but he was smiling. It never hurt anyone to dream.

**THE END.**

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**A/N2: I know, I know, they're out of character. But I think it's worthwhile for them to have semi-serious discussions that have no angst or drama involved, y'know? They can't always be pulling their hair out in frustration and sheer emotion every time they're even two feet apart. They'd be bald by the time they realized their feelings for each other. Thanks for reading til the end!**


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